Heartless Hunter

Sorry to my friends who live and breathe for this book but it was just... not good. SPOILERS AHEAD.

First of all, the book is wayyy too surface level and I should not finish a book with the list of questions I continued to add to while reading. I refuse to blame this on the book being YA or a Romantasy. The plot was lazy, that's it.

My questions for anyone to answer, for the love of god:

1. Why does Rune have any inclination that Gideon suspects she's a witch? Solely because he's a witch hunter? She doesn't know that he saw her name on the ship?

2. Why don't we get to see Rune in action? Why are there no flashbacks to how she freed all of these witches? Seems pretty novice, so how did she do it? We also don't even really get to see Gideon hunting witches!

3. she already suspected Gideon of catching on to her, how could she fall for that mine trap? Is she that dumb? Really? You're the “Crimson Moth” who somehow (we don't know how besides her deadbolt spell which she's not even great at?) frees witches from prisons and smuggles them out of the country- but you fell for that trick. Not realistic at all.

4, Why is there no background into the witch community?? Why are they evil? Did all witches support the evil sister queens? Did they contribute any good to society?

5. No further investigation into the ships? Questioning the sailors? Retracing its routes? Just going to ignore this giant piece of evidence?

The rest of the book was repetitive plot lines and narrations. Oh my god the narration.
And the stupidity of Rune. Again, I don't care that this is YA and she's “young”. She is the Crimson Moth and she's a dang idiot leaving all her witch shit out for the world to see. When Gideon asks, “Why did seraphine try to kill you” “I don't know!” Really? Maybe because you were about to kill her? And turned in your grandma? COME ON. She really had no idea Alex was in love with her? Give me a break.

I think I'll stop here. I honestly couldn't wait for this to end. The twist was predictable and the one character who I could stand dies. I won't be reading the second book.